The video that I created for this month’s VO Challenge – Women’s History Narration
This video features a project that I created as part of VO Coach Domingo Castillo’s monthly challenges, and this month was all about narration. We read a narration script from several that he provided, and I chose this one about Charlotte Woodward and the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 in honor of Women’s History Month.
For this project, I recorded the script in my home studio, edited and mixed it with music, and then created the video. It was my first time using Canva to make a video and it was a great experience! I love Canva for graphics, and making the video was easy and fun. I had used Headliner in the past, but Canva is more flexible.
Thank you so much to the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA) and to Tom Dheere for offering his awesome class about VO business strategies tonight to NAVA members:
Get Your Act Together for 2023 with The VO Strategist, Tom Dheere!
Thinking and executing like a business was the key takeaway, and Tom discussed ideas like having the right mindset, defining success, creating a business plan, and so much more.
Thanks so much for this valuable presentation for NAVA members!!
If you are a voice actor who hasn’t joined NAVA, check out the benefits here: https://navavoices.org/
VO Coach Domingo Castillo offers monthly challenges to all of his students, and for February the task was to create an ad for a furniture store featuring two voices. Thank you to the fabulous Bruce Nix for starring as Voice 2 in my project!
For this challenge, Bruce and I each recorded our parts of the script in our home studios, I edited and mixed them with music, and then created the video using Headliner using clips from Pexels.
This was my first attempt at creating a video with clips — I usually have a static image in the background — and it was pretty easy and fun. It’s always good to challenge yourself to try something new.
Thanks to Domingo for offering these monthly challenges and thanks again to Bruce for your excellent work!
Happy 2023!! Here’s wishing a very happy and healthy year to you and your family!
Before jumping into another year’s worth of…everything, I wanted to pause for a moment to think about 2022.
In some ways, the last year felt like it flew by at the speed of light, and in other ways it feels like time took forever to pass and that I’ve aged 10 years. Reflecting on my professional adventures in 2022, a few things stood out.
First off, thank you to my wonderful VO and writing/editing clients for another successful year! Working with you is a pleasure.
I had many opportunities to learn new things last year, and I’m thankful that I was able to attend several online conferences, including the Actors Summit, the Women in Voice Summit, eVOcation, and Voice 2022.
In addition to learning and networking online, I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to attend PsychCongress in New Orleans last year. I learned so much and explored a new city while covering this conference for Psycom Pro, where I attended sessions about psychiatric questionnaires, anxiety, suicide, and ADHD, to name a few.
Professional development comes in many forms, and I’m happy that I was able to continue and expand my voiceover training by taking improv, singing, and acting classes. I’ve also been adding to my YouTube channel. Last year I also found some great VO resources on Clubhouse to learn from the pros (see rooms by Marc Guss and Liz Atherton) and to connect with colleagues (looking at you, The Working Voice Actor!) Toward the end of 2022, I was delighted to join the National Association of Voice Actors, a nonprofit organization that offers healthcare plans in addition to many other benefits.
Last year I continued to study French (shout out to Chloe Dash Ines for being an amazing teacher) and it brings me much joy. Another area of interest was learning about conversational AI and how to design conversations for chat and voice assistants. Women in Voice is an amazing resource for those interested in voice and technology.
Wrapping up last year’s wrap-up, I wanted to say that I’m grateful for the relationships that are a part of my professional and personal life. I’d like to thank my clients, colleagues, and friends for being a part of my journey. (And if we haven’t met yet, thank you for reading.) I look forward to working with you, learning from you, and getting to know you better!
Let’s face the new year with a mindset of openness and courage – we can do it!
eVOcation 2022 took place last weekend and WOW!! What an amazing, jam-packed 3 days of learning, networking, and fun!! The conference covered so many important topics about the business of voice over, including:
Tips to streamline your workflow
Web design and SEO best practices
A demo review
Rates and negotiation tips
AI voices
The basics of the non-broadcast genre
A casting director panel
Social media strategies for voice actors
A working pros panel
Finding your work-life balance
Optimizing your online casting profiles
Relationships with agents & managers
Email marketing advice
And SHHHhhh, don’t tell, but a panel discussed Fiverr and similar platforms. I loved the name for this panel: “We don’t talk about Fiverr, No, No!”
Many of these topics were followed by a workshop, where we had the time and guidance to take what we’d learned and put it into practice. Things like creating meta title tags for our websites for better SEO, helping find voice descriptor keywords to use on online casting sites, and discussing time management techniques to help achieve the work-life balance that we want.
Sometimes these workshops consisted of breakout rooms where we worked in small groups, and other times we worked with the presenters all together. This time was so valuable because we could apply what we learned while it was fresh in our minds.
Thank you so much to conference organizers Carin Gilfry and Jamie Muffett for providing an excellent program, and thanks also to all of the amazing presenters and panelists for sharing their knowledge and inspiration!! This conference really helped me understand steps that I can take to improve my voiceover business.
The past week featured two amazing summits back-to-back, and I’m still processing all that I’ve learned. First was the Actors Summit, presented by Acting & Voice Studios. Next up was the Women in Voice 2022 Summit. Whew, what a whirlwind of information — let’s cover some highlights.
The Actors Summit took place last weekend, May 20-22, and each day was packed with sessions! Each day featured speakers on three stages happening simultaneously, and sometimes it could be hard to choose which session to attend. I enjoyed hearing from casting directors, agents, voice actors speak about topics like what they look for in auditions, advice on working in commercials & animation, and why improv is good for actors. Two speakers, Joanne Baron and Donna Morong, talked about the Meisner technique, which was really interesting because I recently started reading Sanford Meisner on Acting. On Sunday, I loved hearing Sean Astin answer questions about his early career and how he became an actor. His session was a half hour, but I could have listened to him all day!
On Monday, the 2nd annual Women in Voice, or WiV, Summit began and ran until Thursday afternoon. WiV celebrates voice technology and the Summit included sessions on topics like conversational AI, linguistics, voice acting, voice AI in medicine, and voice tech in cars, to name a few. Tuesday’s keynote featured Bev Standing and Susan Bennett interviewed by Kayla Pitts about their perhaps not-ideal experiences with voice technology as voice actors. They discussed what it was like hearing their voices used by TikTok’s TTS in Bev’s case and by Apple in Susan’s case as the voice of Siri. They also talked about their backgrounds and how they got into voice acting, the business side of VO, and AI voices.
I attended the WiV Summit last year, not sure what to expect, and discovered the field of conversation design. I became really interested in that, and although it’s been a little less than a year, I feel like I’ve come a long way in learning more about it. I’m even in an internship program working on a project based on mental health, which is something I care deeply about. Thanks to WiV, and to all the connections I’ve made through it, for the encouragement to jump in and learn new things!
Today on Clubhouse we heard Liz Atherton of CastVoices talk to Edge Studio owner David Goldberg and Edge’s community relations director, Siobhan O’Loughlin. The interview covered so much, from the beginnings of Edge Studio’s work in voiceover (when David was fed up with the drugs and drinking in the music business and switched to VO production), to its current educational offerings, to notes on what casting directors look for, and wrapped up with a chat about Edge’s resources for voiceover talent. Let’s go through some highlights:
David says that Edge is set up like a college, where new students begin with an evaluation, and an advisor helps guide them through their journey through all facets of the voice over industry.
Liz loves this approach to put talent first.
Siobhan focuses on building the Edge community by offering free resources such as the Ask Me Anything Q&As on Zoom every other week with David and guests, the Home Studio Show & Tell sessions, and other social events in the works. She says that the booth tours were created to support everyone who is trying to pursue voiceover and to inspire people who may be feeling overwhelmed by the process.
With his insights as a casting director, David says that one mistake that voice actors make is that they don’t think about things from the client’s perspective. You have to be in it for your client, not just for yourself.
Liz and David discussed the importance of following directions, especially when slating. And then they shared notes on the most extreme cases of slating fails that they’ve heard as casting directors: Liz takes the prize for listening to the longest slate at 2 minutes and 22 seconds; and David won in the category of hearing the most awkward slate, where the talent said after his name, “I fixed the script because there were so many typos — no extra charge.”
David says that when you’re listening back to your auditions, try to imagine the different people on the creative team who might also be listening and what they may want to hear. For example, the client might be focused on how you say the product name, the marketing team might care more about how you deliver the message, and the engineer might be listening for the recording quality.
Some of the resources that Edge offers are: an extensive script library, a non-union rate card, a words-to-time calculator, and a monthly script-reading contest that gives a detailed explanation of why the top three were chosen from all of the submissions.
Thank you so much to Liz, David, Siobhan for your time today, and to the audience questions as well! You can catch the replay on Clubhouse. Be sure to check out CastVoices and Edge Studio, too!
Hello and Happy New Year! I hope 2022 is treating you well so far.
This is my first blog post, and I wanted to reflect on 2021 and share some highlights from my voiceover journey that were helpful and inspiring to me. Sort of a recap of 2021’s greatest VO hits.
Voiceover Practice: Workouts and Classes
Nothing beats working out with trusted workout buddies and friends, and I’m thankful to have many of these wonderful people in my life who help me practice and improve my craft.
One workout group/class that I’m happy to be a part of is led by Domingo Castillo. His VO Workshops are limited to small groups and it’s a very supportive environment. I’ve learned a lot and made some good friends!
Domingo offers an optional monthly project to anyone who has taken a workshop with him, and I have completed several of these challenges. I had never used Headliner to create a video before taking on the first monthly project assignment, and learning this new skill felt great.
These short projects offer a sample of my voice and style, and they are available on my YouTube channel – another new thing for me in 2021! (Don’t forget to like and subscribe 😊!)
Voiceover Conferences: Learning the biz
This past summer, I attended my first voiceover conference: eVOcation. This was a great opportunity to learn a lot about the business of VO. Some panels featured topics like how to market yourself, questions about rates and negotiation, and tax issues.
In the fall, I attended the That’s Voiceover Career Expo 2021, a conference full of VO greats who shared their advice and stories of success. Anime casting, audio description, diversity in casting, demo trends, and performance techniques of different VO genres were just some of the topics covered during this 3-day event. Some big moments were when Mahershala Ali presented the Backstage Vanguard Award to Denise Woods, as well as seeing a live competition of 6 finalists in the CBS Audition Spotlight. Watching the finalists perform and respond to the judges’ direction was such a valuable learning experience.
Voiceover Learning: Free Webinars/Conversations
This past year, I have found several resources that have been extremely helpful in my VO journey. These are not only wonderful opportunities to learn, they are free! The Society of Voice Arts and Sciences offers free biweekly webinars called The State of VO (which take place on Zoom). These Q&As feature a variety of industry heavy hitters interviewed by hosts Joan Baker and Marc Guss. Be sure to stay for the dance party at the end!
Over on Clubhouse, Marc Guss hosts interviews with VO industry leaders on his weekly Marc Guss Voiceover Club. Also happening on Clubhouse, CastVoices founder Liz Atherton shares interviews and audience Q&A.
I’ve written about a lot of these events on LinkedIn, and going forward I will also post them here on my blog.
Putting Myself Out There
2021 presented a few opportunities for me to put myself out there and participate in some events that were new to me. Speaking of the CBS Audition Spotlight that was featured in the That’s Voiceover conference, I was proud to be selected as one of the Top 40 Callbacks (out of 800+ submissions!) Although I didn’t move on to the third and final round, I had a blast performing for the judges and being a part of it! What a fantastic experience!
I also submitted auditions to the Get Mic’d Ultimate VO Survivor Take 2 contest, where creativity and out-of-the-box experimentation was encouraged. It was a lot of fun watching the finalists compete live in November.
And what 2021 wrap-up would be complete without a Squid Game reference? I participated in the Voiceover Squid Game hosted by Marc Guss on Clubhouse and survived several rounds of elimination!
Apart from VO, I wrote for both Psycom Pro and Practical Pain Managementin 2021 as a freelancer. I didn’t end up pursuing psychology beyond my bachelor’s degree, so it’s nice to contribute to the conversation about mental health because it’s important to me.
On a personal note, I’ve been studying French this past year, trying to remember what I learned in high school and college. It’s so true that if you don’t use it, you lose it! I studied a little Japanese back in college too, which I am also trying to study again (definitely lost all that I previously learned!). I have really loved the language-learning rooms that I’ve discovered on Clubhouse – what an inspiration to keep going with it! (And shout-out to Chloe Dash Ines for being THE MOST encouraging/patient/fun French teacher!)
I had a lot of fun and enriching experiences in 2021, made a lot of connections, and learned so much about the art and science of voiceover. Here’s to keeping that momentum going in 2022!
